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Resolution (meter)
Resolution is the metrical phenomenon in poetry of replacing a normally long syllable in the meter with two short syllables. It is often found in iambic and trochaic meters, and also in anapestic, dochmiac and sometimes in cretic, bacchiac, and ionic meters. In iambic and trochaic meters, either the first or the second half of the metrical foot can be resolved, or sometimes both. The long syllables of dactylic meter are not usually resolved, and resolution is also not found in the last element of a line. Resolution, when a normally long syllable is replaced by two shorts, is to be distinguished from a biceps element, which is a place in a meter (such as in a dactylic hexameter) where two normally short syllables may be replaced by a single long one. In Ancient Greek Resolution is generally found in Greek lyric poetry and in Greek and Roman drama, most frequently in comedy. It should not be confused with a biceps, which is a point in a meter which can equally be two shorts o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meter (poetry)
In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody. (Within linguistics, " prosody" is used in a more general sense that includes not only poetic metre but also the rhythmic aspects of prose, whether formal or informal, that vary from language to language, and sometimes between poetic traditions.) Characteristics An assortment of features can be identified when classifying poetry and its metre. Qualitative versus quantitative metre The metre of most poetry of the Western world and elsewhere is based on patterns of syllables of particular types. The familiar type of metre in English-language poetry is called qualitative metre, with stressed syllables comin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brevis Brevians
''Brevis brevians'', also known as iambic shortening or , is a feature of early Latin verse, in which a pair of syllables which are theoretically short + long (u –) can count in the metre as a pair of short syllables (u u). The plural is . The main types of iambic shortening are as follows: (1) commonly used two-syllable words such as in which the final vowel is usually short even in classical Latin; (2) the first two syllables of phrases starting with a two-syllable word such as "go, please", "I want to know", "at the forum", "newly born"; (3) the first two syllables of longer words accented on the 3rd syllable, such as "pleasure" and "old age"; (4) the first two syllables of phrases starting from a monosyllable such as "what are you afraid of?", "what he is saying", "from the army", "angry with you"; (5) more rarely, and mainly in anapaestic metres, it can occur at the end of words of cretic rhythm (– u –) such as "to no one more" or across word boundaries as in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Four Quartets
''Four Quartets'' is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, ''Burnt Norton'', was published with a collection of his early works (1936's ''Collected Poems 1909–1935''). After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, ''East Coker'', '' The Dry Salvages'', and '' Little Gidding'', which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. They were first published as a series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 1940 and 1942 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career (''East Coker'' in September 1940, ''Burnt Norton'' in February 1941, ''The Dry Salvages'' in September 1941 and ''Little Gidding'' in 1942). The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943. ''Four Quartets'' are four interlinked meditations with the common theme being man's relationship with time, the universe, and the divine. In describing his understanding of the divine with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Masefield
John Edward Masefield (; 1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1930 until 1967. Among his best known works are the children's novels ''The Midnight Folk'' and ''The Box of Delights'', and the poems ''The Everlasting Mercy'' and "Sea-Fever". Biography Early life Masefield was born in Ledbury in Herefordshire, to George Masefield, a solicitor, and his wife Caroline. His mother died giving birth to his sister when Masefield was six, and he went to live with his aunt. His father died soon afterwards, following a mental breakdown. After an unhappy education at the Warwick School, King's School in Warwick (now known as Warwick School), where he was a boarder between 1888 and 1891, he left to board , both to train for a life at sea and to break his addiction to reading, of which his aunt thought little. He spent several years aboard this ship, and found that he could spend much of his time reading and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalectic
A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line. A line missing two syllables is called brachycatalectic. In English Poems can be written entirely in catalectic lines, or entirely in acatalectic (complete) lines, or a mixture, as the following carol, composed by Cecil Frances Alexander in 1848: :Once in Royal David's city (8 syllables) : Stood a lowly cattle shed, (7 syllables) :Where a mother laid her Baby (8 syllables) : In a manger for His bed: (7 syllables) :Mary was that mother mild, (7 syllables) :Jesus Christ her little Child. (7 syllables) It has been argued that across a number of Indo-European languages, when the two types of line are mixed in this way, the shorter line tends to be used as a coda at the end of a period or stanza. Blun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humpty Dumpty
Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's ''National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs''. Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings. Humpty Dumpty was popularized in the United States on Broadway by actor George L. Fox in the pantomime musical ''Humpty Dumpty''. The show ran from 1868 to 1869, for a total of 483 performances, becoming the longest-running Broadway show until it was surpassed in 1881 by ''Hazel Kirke''. As a character and literary allusion, Humpty Dumpty has appeared or been referred to in many works of literature and popular culture, particularly English author Lewis Carroll's 1871 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. Scholars call the anonymous author the "''Beowulf'' poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman (a relative of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alliterative Verse
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the Germanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The Old English epic ''Beowulf'', as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German '' Muspilli'', the Old Saxon '' Heliand'', the Old Norse ''Poetic Edda'', and many Middle English poems such as ''Piers Plowman'', ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'', and the '' Alliterative Morte Arthur'' all use alliterative verse. While alliteration can be found in many poetic traditions, it is 'relatively infrequent' as a structured characteristic of poetic form.Frog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galliambic Verse
''Versus Galliambicus'' (Latin), or the ''Galliambic Verse'' (English), is a verse built from the Ionic à minore dimeter catalectic verse, as it is a verse added upon an Ionic à minori dimeter base. The ''Galliambic verse'' consists of two iambic dimeters catalectic of which the last one lacks the final syllable. It is structured with four Ionic à minore feet that is varied by resolutio) or contraction. This metre is also meant for the goddess Cybele. In Latin, ''galliambus'' is a song of the priests of Cybele, the ancient nature goddess of Anatolia. The Galliambic metre is constructed as shown below: uu , uu u uu u , – – , , uu , uu u uu u , × * "x" represents an anceps * a "u" represents a short syllable * a "—" represents a long syllable * a "uu" can be either 2 short syllables or 1 long syllable * the ", , " represents the caesura 300px, An example of a caesura in modern western music notation A caesura (, . caesuras or caesurae; Latin for " cutting" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ennius
Quintus Ennius (; c. 239 – c. 169 BC) was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was born in the small town of Rudiae, located near modern Lecce, Apulia, (Ancient Calabria, today Salento), a town founded by the Messapians, and could speak Greek as well as Latin and Oscan (his native language). Although only fragments of his works survive, his influence in Latin literature was significant, particularly in his use of Greek literary models. Biography Very little is reliably known about the life of Ennius. His contemporaries hardly mentioned him and much that is related about him could have been embroidered from references to himself in his now fragmentary writings. Some lines of the ''Annales'', as well as ancient testimonies, for example, suggest that Ennius opened his epic with a recollection of a dream in which the ancient epic-writer Homer informed him that his spirit had been reborn into Ennius. It is t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
